Super Tuesday was bad for Haley. But the results expose Trump weaknesses as well
Nikki Haley’s campaign was left in the dust by Donald Trump’s on Tuesday night in the kind of showing that could severely weaken her ability to press on towards the GOP convention in July.
The former governor of South Carolina was only projected to win one state, Vermont, on Tuesday as her opponent cleaned up with victories in more than a dozen others likely to include the two largest prizes of the night: California and Texas. Should Ms Haley prevail over the former president in the northeast, it will be with a slim margin of victory eclipsed by the wide gulfs separating her from Mr Trump in every other state.
Her opponent is now in a clear position to secure enough delegates to win the nomination outright within a matter of weeks if not days. Ms Haley had previously vowed to remain in the race through Tuesday night but could see her presidential hopes come to an end very soon. A total of 865 Republican delegates were at stake today, with Mr Trump set to win the lion’s share; he needs 1,215 to clinch the nomination, and walked into Tuesday with more than 200.
Super Tuesday reasonably couldn’t have gone much worse for Ms Haley. She had campaigned in Virginia, North Carolina, Massachusetts and a handful of other states with big plans to win them from Mr Trump; she is not likely to come within single digits of Mr Trump in a single one, excluding Vermont. Her lack of support from conservative Republican voters continues to cast a long shadow on her chances of winning the nomination, especially including the large segment of the party that still believes conspiracies about the 2020 election.
Her campaign spokesperson alluded to that in a statement responding to the results late Tuesday night: “[T]here remains a large block of Republican primary voters who are expressing deep concerns about Donald Trump. That is not the unity our party needs for success. Addressing those voters’ concerns will make the Republican Party and America better.”
Mr Trump, meanwhile, continues to show enough of a weakness with centrist Republicans and independents to suggest that he will face real problems in November. If polls are correct and a significant portion of Haley voters do not support him in a general election, it could be a massive boon for Democrats — even if those voters do not pull the lever for Joe Biden. The argument that so-called “never Trump” pundits are making continues to ring true: in just about every state, between a fifth to a third of all Republican primary voters continue to signal that they do not want Donald Trump to be their party’s nominee; even in the Republican stronghold state of Texas, Ms Haley was likely to finish the night with more than 15 per cent of the vote.
It’s just as much, if not more so, an argument against Donald Trump as it is in Ms Haley’s favour. But it’s one that some of Mr Biden’s most ardent supporters continue to point to as well as they shrug off the incumbent president’s own popularity issues.
The incumbent president suffered another minor humiliation on Tuesday in the form of a projected defeat in American Samoa, a US territory. He was expected to lose there to Jason Palmer, an entrepreneur who has qualified for the ballot in less than half of all US states. The 52-year-old campaigned on the collection of islands that make up the territory, and saw his campaign website crash (likely due to intense traffic) after his projected victory over the president Tuesday evening. Mr Palmer’s win is likely to be attributed to both concerns among Democrats about Mr Biden seeking another term at his advanced age, 81, as well as his own calls for increased political representation for American Samoa in Washington.
Mr Biden remains in a virtually uncompetitive primary contest regardless of some dissatisfaction among Democrats regarding both his age and other issues such as the war in Gaza; if that dissatisfaction manifests at the polls it will most likely do so in November in the form of decreased turnout. The expected renomination of Donald Trump by the Republican Party, however, will likely at least blunt that trend.
Mr Trump’s campaign and the candidate himself have for weeks largely pivoted towards a focus on the general election. The former president has shifted towards attacking his expected November opponent even while many Republicans privately and in some cases publicly mutter about how they expect Mr Biden to be replaced by a younger candidate before the fall.
One of those Republicans speculating as much is Ms Haley, who just days ago told supporters that she expected the Democratic Party to replace Mr Biden or for the incumbent president to bow out in the months ahead.
The next contests in Georgia, Washington, Mississippi and Hawaii are just a week away; it remains to be seen whether the former president will still have a challenger by the time they arrive.